WITH IRISH peacekeepers (pictured above) about to head off for their latest mission abroad, the Defences Forces were yesterday involved in pre-deployment training in advance of their forthcoming tour of duty in Syria.

The 46th Infantry Group is deploying there on a mission established to supervise the implementation of an ‘Area of Separation’ and two equal zones of limited forces and armaments in the Golan Heights region between Syria and Israel.

The Irish contingent will constitute the Force Reserve Company and its tasks will be to provide Armoured Force Protection for UNDOF Personnel, to conduct regular patrolling of the Area of Separation and to provide mutual support to UNDOF elements located in Observation Posts throughout the Area of Separation.

(More members of the search and clearance team)

Such a deployment is not without its risks. Last November, a platoon of Irish peacekeepers escaped unharmed when they were shelled in Syria yesterday.

The 39 soldiers were on escort duty when three shells landed within 200m of their convoy. And another ten shells landed near them on their way back to their base in the Golan Heights.

The men, who are mostly attached to the 2nd Brigade at Dublin’s Cathal Brugha Barracks, were with 24 other soldiers from the UN Disengagement Observer Force.

They had left their base at Faouar in a ten-vehicle convoy when they stumbled into a skirmish between government forces and rebels.

Captain Brian Coughlan (pictured above), from Co Offaly, said last night: ‘Obviously there is a certain amount of apprehension but with the training we have all been conducting over the past few weeks and months, I believe we will be more than able to deal with the challenges we face.’

The 26-year-old engineering graduate will be running a specialist search and clearance team that will be tasked with eliminating road side bombs.

The 46th Infantry Group will be the third Irish contingent to deploy with UNDOF.

It is comprised of 130 Irish personnel – comprising of 14 officers, a chaplain and 115 other ranks – and will constitute the Force Reserve Company of an overall UNDOF Mission strength of 1,250 troops.

Other states contributing military personnel to the mission include Fiji Islands, Philippines, India and Nepal.

Helping with their endangerment is the growth in the human population and resulting encroachment into their natural habitat, a reduction in areas exclusively reserved for them in the wild, poaching and an increase in railway-related accidents since the Indian government increased the size, speed and range of their railways.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, the population of Asian elephants has dropped from 100,000 at the start of the 20th century by about 50% over the last 60-75 years.

The WWF also points out that about 20% of the world’s human population lives in or around the areas where Asian elephants live in the wild.

The number of Asian elephants living in the wild have now dwindled to somewhere between an estimated 25,600 and 32,750

One of the main solutions to arrest the Asian elephant population decline are what are known as ‘Elephant Corridors’, and Dublin Zoo funds a number of these.

According to its website, Dublin Zoo has been supporting Asian elephant conservation projects since 2008.

Then, it joined forces with the (Asian) Elephant Family charity and in 2010, along with them and the World Wildlife Trust of India, they funded research into establishing corridors in north east India.

The Dublin Zoo website states: ‘After preliminary studies, the Kalapahr-Daigurung corridor was selected for further investigation as it offered the best prospects of establishing a viable corridor and elephants regularly pass through this area.

‘This corridor would connect the Kalioni Reserve Forest and the Kaziranga National Park (biodiversity hotspot and World Heritage Site).

‘Local people have been surveyed about their use of the corridor, the local planning authorities have been notified of its presence and signage has been erected advising people to minimise their presence here and to take precautions if passing through.

‘Further ecological studies need to be conducted before the corridor is procured’.

As well as working to set up these corridors, Dublin Zoo – recently voted one of the best in Europe –is also very active in raising awareness of their plight.

It, for example, helps Elephant Family run the Elephant Parade Classroom Challenge in Ireland, an international fund-raising art competition.

But the whole issue of elephants in captivity is not without its critics.

Peta, for example, is currently running a campaign to ‘Get Elephants Out of Zoos’. And there is an emerging raft of studies which make observations about the ethics of keeping elephants in Zoos.

‘Keeping elephants in zoos is extremely costly, yet does not yield self-sustaining populations. In Europe, which holds c. half the global zoo elephant population, a long-term decline of c.10% per year is expected in both species, if reliant on zoo-bred animals under historically prevailing conditions.

‘The welfare implications of captivity, and the relative cost and effectiveness of ex versus in situ conservation, determine the value of captive breeding for any given species.

‘Several species apparently thrive in zoo conditions and captive breeding has saved some from extinction.

‘However, ex situ conservation is typically costlier than in situ programs, captive-bred individuals often fare poorly in the wild and many species show reproductive failure and elevated mortality in captivity, raising ethical concerns particularly when stress is implicated.

‘Asian and African elephants (who can live up to about 60 years in the wild, according to National Geographic) exemplify such problems.

‘The zoo elephant populations of North America are non-self-sustaining, and require importation from range countries – a practice criticized by the IUCN.

‘Both species are naturally wide-ranging and socially complex,and the large disparities between in situ and zoo environments have elicited concerns about elephant welfare in captivity.

‘Nevertheless many zoos argue that their elephants are vital for conservation, and that their viability is improving.

‘These arguments underpin commitments to spend very large sums relative to in situ conservation costs: around €40million per year in maintenance and, in the last decade, over €407million in facility upgrades worldwide.’

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